Oral history as a method of recording war crimes: experiences of the Russian occupation

Abstract

Today, there is an opinion that the Russian-Ukrainian war has every reason to become one of the most documented wars in the world. After all, with the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the process of massive recording of oral history eyewitness testimonies of the tragic events of the spring of 2022 began, which continues to this day at the level of various initiatives. As the experience of the past three years has shown, the research tools developed by colleagues in their work on the topics of World War II, the Holodomor, etc. were mostly concerned with the study of historical events that were completed in time. The source base, which was formed over decades, essentially consists of interviews recorded many years after the event itself. Recording memories in real time has never been done before. Currently, research in the “here and now” mode allows for the recording of oral history testimonies not only to form a corpus of sources that will later be included in the archive of Ukraine’s modern history, but also to use them for advocacy purposes. The purpose of this study is to characterize the peculiarities of using the oral history method as an auxiliary tool for forming a source base on the war crimes of the Russian occupiers in Ukraine. The main research methods are interviews based on specially designed questionnaires and the method of comparative analysis. The scientific novelty is the introduction of information about a significant array of sources on the oral history of modern warfare, including eyewitness accounts of Russian criminal actions against civilians in the territory of the de-occupied Chernihiv and Kyiv regions. Numerous interviews were recorded during the oral history project “Humanitarian Aspects of the Russian-Ukrainian War: Historical and Cultural Visions and Modern Survival Strategies.” Conclusions. The published materials are an important component of source and legal studies, which are of paramount importance for professional research and interpretation of various aspects of the Russian-Ukrainian war, including the recorded forms of Russian violence against civilians.